


All the Tenderness of a Song

by adoxyinherear



Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-28
Updated: 2020-12-28
Packaged: 2021-03-10 20:35:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 1,017
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28393224
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/adoxyinherear/pseuds/adoxyinherear
Summary: If there was one thing Cole had learned since becoming more human, it was that they weren’t careful with their hearts.--Mostly responses to the Friday Night Dragon Age Drunk Writing Circle featuring one of my favorite rare pairs. Updates sporadic.
Relationships: Cole/Maryden Halewell
Comments: 4
Kudos: 3





	1. Pinned with a Word

Cole watched as Maryden wiped down the strings of her instrument, felt the soft vibration of sound reach him even where he perched on the balcony above. Not his usual spot, but nothing felt usual, felt normal since he’d confronted the Templar in Redcliffe - things _felt_ , which wasn’t usual or normal. Not for him.

She placed her instrument in its case next, gently, like she was handling an infant rather than something that had been crafted by human hands. He supposed infants were crafted by hand, as well. That was part of it, anyway - it began with a touch.

Heat spiked from Cole’s center to his heart, to fingertips wondering if the experience was the same, to play across ribs or strings.

“Goodnight, Cabot,” Maryden called, slinging the case over her shoulder. The dwarf only grunted his farewell, clearing tankards from the bar and carrying them into the back for washing up. Cole started when Maryden turned her attention upward, meeting his pale eyes with her own, dark as onyx in the tavern’s low light.

“Goodnight, Cole.”

And she grinned. Cole’s head and heart and groin and legs were on fire. Was he coming apart? Were there seams in his new self that could be ripped open and let him out?

Or maybe let someone else in.

“Goodnight,” he called, but she was already walking out the door, walking away with a part of him, he was sure. He needed it back. He needed. He. Needed.

Cole retreated to the top floor of the tavern, every step he took away from her, away from the place she’d pinned him a word, made heavier.

“I shouldn’t be in love with you. Can’t. Couldn’t begin to. I’m not even sure I know how,” he whispered to himself, to her, to the self he’d been and the one he imagined holding Maryden’s hand - holding Maryden - with all the tenderness of a song.


	2. Discovery

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There are benefits to not being a spirit.

“What are you doing?”

Maryden had laid a hand on Cole’s arm. It felt like she’d plucked every vein, like she’d struck bone. A reminder that he had those now.

“I’m flirting with you.”

Her voice was low and musical in a way he hadn’t heard before. Cole leaned closer without even realizing he was doing it.

“Can you do it again?”

At this Maryden laughed, a sound that bumped into him, crashed over him, reverberated in the cavern, his chest, where he kept his new heart. Cole felt a little bit like Maryden’s instrument, the way the slightest touch of her hand commanded him. Did her lute want more, too?

When Maryden didn’t speak but only smiled, her cheeks pink from wine - and something more, he realized, something as newly conjured as Cole felt - he laid his hand over hers, long fingers fitting themselves in every gap she’d left between her own. He stroked his thumb impulsively in the hollow of her palm. Before he would’ve had more than just the intake of her breath to help him understand how it made her feel: he would’ve seen the high colors of her heart, would’ve sensed the flow of blood to her lips and cheeks, between her legs.

Meeting her eyes and feeling his own blood pumping, Cole found he didn’t miss it, knowing more. Knowing everything.

There was something special about discovering.


	3. A Gift of Words

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cole appreciates a sleepy Maryden.

Once he’d moved freely, invisible to the Herald’s Rest patrons and the whole of Skyhold, besides. But though Cole had lost his anonymity, he didn’t need it to overhear the castle’s secrets. If there was one thing he’d learned since becoming more human, it was that they weren’t careful with their hearts.

And so when he held Maryden close, her hot, sleepy breath against his neck, the words he’d heard from so many others were there on his tongue - thicker, warmer, and more clumsy than it had been, though more versatile, he thought - and it was easy to say them. To mean them, to own them.

To gift them.

“I adore you.”

Maryden couldn’t hear him, of course. She was dreaming, deep in the Fade. He could still tell when others were dreaming and he could join her, if he wished. But he’d have to sleep, too; there was no slipping back and forth anymore.

But there was so much more, anymore.

Cole’s lips brushed her brow, teasing a curl, tickling. The whistle of air from her lungs was a song and his drowsy breath a harmony. His arms tightened around her, the soft circle of her waist, fingers on flesh on the fine bones beneath. Like a silk coverlet, her skin. 

She blanketed him in every feeling.


	4. Blood Red as Ribbons

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There are drawbacks to being a human.

She was losing blood, red as ribbons spilling from her belly where the bolt had pierced her silks, her flesh.

“I’m going to take care of you, okay? Care, caring, carving, it’s what I know,” Cole murmured. He stroked Maryden’s cheek, a comfort he wouldn’t have fathomed, before. Even with a form of his own he hesitated still in his physical interactions.

Maryden clutched at his arm, possessing no such hesitations. Cole almost lost himself in consideration of her fingers, fine-boned and beautiful, nails filed short to accommodate her playing. The white of new growth was like quarter moons at their bases.

His own fingers bloodied quickly as he cut a length of her blouse away, as he pressed a bandage to the wound. If he’d been a spirit still he could’ve held her mind and body both but he had to look away now, eyes scouting rapidly for a surgeon. They were supposed to be safe here.

He was supposed to help make things safe.

“They run like frightened deer, wounded but too afraid to feel it, fearing more to feel than to flee,” he mumbled, the pressure of her hands and his own anchoring his thoughts again. Cole met Maryden’s eyes.

“Am I going to die?”

There was no musicality to her words now, no song, no sweetness whose trail he could follow to her lips. Cole lowered his head, pressed his cheek to hers. Both were cool and cooling still.

“You won’t be alone.”


End file.
